


Roses are For Schmucks

by mousapelli



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friends to Lovers, Hanahaki Disease, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 17:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17248655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousapelli/pseuds/mousapelli
Summary: Otabek's petals are roses, red velvet where Yuri carries them around in his pocket. Yuri's petals are waxy yellow tulips, because he can't even get that right.





	Roses are For Schmucks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stariceling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/gifts).



> Written for 2018 SportsFest, Remix round. Original fill that I remixed [here](https://sportsfest.dreamwidth.org/10320.html?thread=2013008#cmt2013008).
> 
> uh this was supposed to be short and then it went terribly wrong. The original was all Otabek's POV so I wanted to write about what the problem was from Yuri's end. Also when I went back to link it, I realized there was a part 2 and 3 and I only read part 1 before remixing. FAILURE.

They're supposed to be red, is what Yuri thinks the first time it happens. Surely anybody normal should have a lot more concerns than what color when they cough a perfect flower petal into their palm, but Yuri's mind is entirely empty except for confusion that the petal is the waxy, slick yellow of a tulip and not red or pink or white like he's always heard other people's are.

Maybe he's too focused on gold medals, he thinks blackly as he wraps himself in his comforter and muffles his coughing so that Lilia won't hear and interrogate him about it. Nothing else about him has ever been normal so small wonder this is messed up too.

It's no mystery that it's Otabek, either, and even less of a mystery that Otabek is an even bigger mess over Yuri than Yuri is. Otabek's interest is about as subtle as zipping up on a rented motorcycle and staying up all night together and biting Yuri's glove right off his hand; after all of that, the rushed kiss in the doorway of Otabek's hotel room is almost anticlimactic. Yuri comes away with a petal in his mouth, and knows it isn't his because of the softness of it against his tongue, like velvet, even before he pulls it out to see that it's red.

"Sorry," Otabek says, face stony, almost angry. Yuri's pretty sure it's not him Otabek is angry with.

"Don't be." Yuri flicks it away. "They're prettier than mine." When Otabek doesn't move in for a second kiss, Yuri does it himself. He drags Otabek into his room to keep on trading rough, impatient kisses, both of them trying to make the other forget that their flights are only hours away.

They manage to see each other in person twice during the season: once at Worlds, and once a stolen weekend where Otabek lied to his coach about a changed flight connection and Yuri told everyone he was visiting his grandfather. It's intense when they're together, electric and tinged with desperation, both of them frustrated that the flowers are so much worse when they're together.

"None of this makes any sense," Otabek groans into Yuri's shoulder, both of them wrung out from trying to stay awake the whole of what little time they have. The hotel television is on, but Yuri isn't watching it, listening instead to how Otabek's heart beats differently than his own under his fingertips. "Am I hurting you?"

"Don't be stupid," Yuri snaps. He doesn't know what's wrong with them, with him, but he does know that if soulmates are supposed to make him feel anything more intense than what Otabek causes, he'd die. Probably explode in blizzard of shitty tulip petals. Either it isn't meant to be the two of them together, which it is, or it's unrequited, which it isn't, or the two of them are just too much, unfixable.

At least they're in it together, Yuri thinks blackly as he presses his nose against the glass divider before airport security, Otabek already out of sight. Sort of. He keeps a scatter of rose petals in his coat pocket for days, crushing them restlessly between his fingers until they dry out and crumble into pieces.

In the summer, Otabek comes for a month, for Yuri, and for training. The first day he comes to the rink, his face is grim like he's going to war, ready to reclaim his lost honor from that long-ago training camp or die trying. Yuri spends every off-ice moment in Otabek's rented apartment and Yakov doesn't even try to fight him on it, chuckling darkly that they'll get sick of each other faster for overindulging.

He's a little right, but mostly wrong. After two weeks they are starting to get on each other's nerves, but there's almost a perverse pleasure in it, on having so much time that they can finally start to feel the sharp corners where they don't fit perfectly together. Otabek loses his temper over Yuri leaving his things all over the place and Yuri leans into the argument almost eagerly, tired of wondering where the breaking point is. They shout and call each other names; Yuri threatens to leave and when Otabek tells him to go on and do it, slams open the glass porch door instead of the front door because he doesn't actually want to go anywhere else.

He stands on the tiny apartment balcony, leaning on the railing into the wind and wallowing in how mad he is. It's a safe tantrum, because he knows he can go back inside anytime he wants. He pinches a yellow petal out from his cheek and drops it so that it flutters away, out of sight between the buildings, and then at small intervals, another, then another.

After a length of time, he hears the slide of the door behind him, and Otabek comes to lean on the railing next to him.

"I thought for a while you genuinely went out the wrong door and were just too stubborn to come in and go out the real one," Otabek says. He pulls a half-crushed package of cigarettes out of his pocket, shakes one out, and lights it. It doesn't smell anything like the ones Yuri's grandfather smokes. "But then I realized, you aren't dumb, and I wouldn't know where to go to say I was sorry for shouting if you weren't where I could see you through the glass."

"I'm sorry too," Yuri says, even though he isn't, very much. "I didn't know you smoked."

"Not often." Otabek exhales a gray sigh. "When I am stressed out."

Yuri's lips twitch. "Do I stress you out?"

"Only anytime I'm breathing," Otabek answers drolly. There's no ashtray, so Otabek has to give Yuri the cigarette to hold for a minute while he goes back inside. He returns with a short glass and sits it on the railing on his other side, out of range of Yuri's elbow. "Do you ever? At home it's something you do out with friends. Is it like that here?"

"Lilia would put my head on a pike to warn other skaters," Yuri snorts. He slouches down to lean his cheek against his wrists. "And I don't have friends."

"What? You do so." Otabek frowns, like he finds that thought upsetting. Yuri shrugs.

"Not like you mean," he says. The wind has pulled some strands loose from his badly-done bun, and Yuri twists one around his finger. "People my own age, who have the same experiences as me. There's Mila, I guess, when she wasn't trying to tell twelve-year-old me about French kissing hockey players. The Katsudon's probably the closest thing to that, last summer, because at least we understood each other's training problems and complained about Victor together. How pathetic is that? Anyway, he's Victor's so it doesn't matter." Yuri spits three petals as punctuation, one after the other into the wind, like watermelon seeds.

"Hm," Otabek says. Yuri expects him to argue, because everyone does when he tries to talk about this. Instead Otabek just stands quietly, thinking for the lengths of a few more drags of his cigarette. "Do you think we can be friends?"

"Is that what you want?" Yuri asks, frowning at the cars passing by below. He doesn't know much about this shit, but the way he woke up this morning with his hair wrapped around Otabek's fist and Otabek's mouth against his throat doesn't seem like friendship to him.

"I want to be whatever you need," Otabek says. Yuri hunches his shoulders against the way he says such honest things so bluntly. "To be everything. That doesn't sound reasonable, does it?" Otabek huffs a sigh and stubs out his cigarette in the bottom of the glass. "I never want to be reasonable when I'm with you." He coughs suddenly, into his fist, and drops a few crushed petals into the glass. The cigarette is still hot and burns one of them into a black curl.

"Can we do both?" Yuri asks, asking not for permission but more if it's possible at all. "Because I'm not giving up making out or the other stuff." Yuri shuffles over so that his side is pressed against Otabek's; Otabek lifts his arm to gather Yuri in closer. "That's what you asked for in the first place, if I wanted to be friends."

"I thought if I asked you for what I really wanted, you'd slap me into the next week." Otabek laughs, breath warm against Yuri's hair. "You said yes, though. Even though we wanted different things, you've been giving me what I wanted all year. I want to give you what you want, too."

"I just want you," Yuri growls, fed up with words. He twists in Otabek's grip and palms his cheeks to crush their mouths together, wrinkling his nose at the taste of smoke but not stopping.

It takes three days for them to realize neither of them has coughed up so much as a petal since then.

"Yellow is for friendship, you know," Otabek says. Yuri's head in his lap, Otabek dragging his fingers through his Yuri's hair.

"Roses are for schmucks," Yuri responds, then curses when Otabek closes his fist and yanks.


End file.
